For the past two months, we have been sleeping on the floor on a Japanese futon. While it started out a bit rocky, I don’t see us ever going back to a traditional bed.
Why #
I don’t believe that human beings are meant to sleep on cloud soft bedding, and that it is actually detrimental to the skeletal and muscular systems of the body to do so. While we have always likely used some sort of “bedding” - it was moreso to keep us warm and dry rather than to soften the surface underneath us.
Anecdotally, when I was too sore in the past, I would lie on the floor and use a yoga mat with a blanket ontop of it so as not to get too cold. There were many nights I’ve found myself sleeping directly on the floor.
Some may think me crazy, but I feel far better than I have in a long while.
This may not be for everyone - the fact is that I experience back pain everyday of my life, and have for a third of my life since breaking my spine in 5 places in 2013. This is not for everyone, and if you enjoy your soft comfy bed, I am not saying that you should throw it away.
But - I will be throwing mine out.
The piece of garbage bed in Montreal #
The thing that sparked this for me was serendipitous when I moved to Montreal in 2019.
For the first week, I slept on a completely rock hard board of a bed in an AirBNB over an electronics shop on Saint Laurent street. It was a piece of trash - and yet, I felt amazing getting up every morning!
This has always been in the back of my mind for the last 5 years, but I didn’t really understand until the last six months.
The Downfall of Josh #
Sitting down to write my book last summer, and then continuing my computer use habits over the last year in order to move into a career in SaaS has been detrimental to my posture and wellbeing. It got unbearable - the pains in my shoulders and back that came from the laptop position, the lower back pain from sitting, and even though I go to the gym at least 3-4 times a week, it still was only keeping the pain at bay, I was never getting ahead of it.
Couple this with our way too soft bed in Edmonton, and I thought I was 80 when I just turned 31.
Something had to give, and I remembered that bed from all those years ago, and the next thing I had available to me was the floor - so, well, that is where I ended up.
How a human should sleep #
I did much research on this topic, and - apparently - nothing pisses people off more than saying that I sleep on the floor. There are many people that can’t even conceive of the possibility of not owning a bed and using something that is everywhere to sleep on. The floor is free - and that makes people… angry?
For most of human existence, a mattress and bed were not really a “thing”.
We slept on the ground with some light padding, or under the stars on the grass. We need support for our backs, and a flat, hard surface will provide that. The modern invention of the overly engineered and cloud-soft bed has probably done far more ill than anything.
This is not the thing that sold the floor to me, however. The fact that sleeping on the floor is like a night-long massage did though. Nothing supports the human form better than the ground. And, when you sleep on the floor, you get the knots and tightness worked out by the floor - for free every night!
The Bed #
The one thing that most people never question in the West is the bed.
The bed is a religion, the belief that we must spend $3,000 on one a foregone conclusion.
When we were in Italy this spring, the beds in all our accommodations were more stiff than I was used to, but I quickly realized that I felt way better in the morning after getting out of a hard bed than I did with our over-engineered memory foam tempurpedic whatever other marketing terms.
Couple this with an active lifestyle of walking every where, the Euro diet, and carrying heavy loads (we did carry-on only for the trip), and I felt GREAT.
Returning home, I quickly saw my body deteriorate as we went back to sleeping in our soft bed night after night. Within a week, I was back to feeling creaky and stiff.
The Rocky Start #
While I didn’t have too much trouble adjusting to the floor, Rebecca had about a week of anguish as her body adjusted to a much harder sleeping surface. But - after the adjustment, she actually prefers the futon and has suggested we get (a thicker) one when we are back at home.
This is not uncommon it seems, other people that have made the switch have said there is a period of a week to a month of your body adjusting to the harder surface, but nearly all say that once they are adjusted, they could never go back.
Furniture, the great scam #
Going further, I am fairly convinced that the furniture everyone wants to buy to fill their home is entirely a scam.
Why?
Because there is a perfectly good ground every place you look! And, that ground supports us just fine.
In the Western world as we get older, we lose all the flexibility that we had as children. All the ability to get down to the ground being gone we suffer into old age. I watch my daughter with envy and awe at the natural flexibility God gave us, and yet we lose it because we want to be “comfortable”.
In Asia and the Eastern world, it is not uncommon to see 70 or 80 year old people able to deep squat and sit on the floor without any issue. That is not happening for anyone besides the most physical specimen of western man.
Because of the constant movement, the sitting on the floor, the getting up and down, the flexibility that is not lost, the joints that are not calcified in sitting in a desk chair every day of our lives, people have longevity that is unheard of in the West.
So, as we work toward our next step in life and get rid of most of our items, I may never own a conventional desk or office chair again. I see many benefits to working on the floor, getting lower to the ground, and moving as much as possible throughout the day.
Much to my girlfriend’s chagrin, I want to get rid of the couch and replace it with a wholly floor sitting setup. This will take some convincing, but I think it is within the wheel house. If not, I can always sit on the floor while she is comfortable.
Constant movement is the key to longevity, it is the key to health, and to having a body that doesn’t hurt all of the time.
Are Bedrooms a scam? #
A room dedicated to a bed?
If the bed is a scam, then the room that it sits in is most certainly, too. When you think of the purpose of a bedroom and the amount of square footage a bed takes up, as well as the wardrobe (excessive clothing is another anchor) and you see that there is a room that could be better used for other things (a child’s playroom, or save on rent by axing that room altogether.)
This you come to see then that you pay per bedroom when you rent or buy a home, and if you don’t own a bed, well, why would you need the room?
Why would you even need a house? A tent in the woods works just as well!
Now I’m just turning into a conspiracy theorist.
Until next time.